TWENTY-FIVE
My Funeral Director Dresses Me Funny
One good thing about being homeless: I knew where to find free clothes. Hearth and I raided a charity drop box on Charlesgate so I wouldn’t have to walk around town in my PJs. Soon I was resplendent in stonewashed jeans, a hunting jacket and a T-shirt peppered with holes. I looked more like Kurt Cobain than ever, except I doubt Cobain ever wore a shirt that read: WIGGLES ROCK & ROLL PRESCHOOL TOUR! The really disturbing thing was that they made shirts like that in my size.
I held up my hotel-issued sword. ‘Hearth, what about this? I doubt the cops will like me walking around with a three-foot blade.’
Glamour, Hearth signed. Attach it to your belt.
As soon as I did, the weapon shrank and melted into a simple loop of chain, which was only slightly less fashionable than the Wiggles T-shirt.
‘Great,’ I said. ‘Now my humiliation is complete.’
Still a sword, Hearth signed. Mortals are not good at seeing magical things. Between Ice and Fire is Mist, G-i-n-n-u-n-g-a-g-a-p. Obscures appearances. Hard to explain in signs.
‘Okay.’ I remembered what Gunilla had told me about the worlds forming between ice and fire, and how Frey represented the temperate zone in between. Apparently, though, Frey’s children didn’t inherit an innate understanding of what the heck that meant.
I read my obituary again for the address of the funeral home. ‘Let’s go pay our respects to me.’
It was a long, cold walk. The temperature didn’t bother me, but Hearth shivered in his leather jacket. His lips were cracked and peeling. His nose was runny. From all the fantasy books and movies I had devoured in middle school, I’d got an impression of elves as noble creatures of unearthly beauty. Hearthstone looked more like an anaemic college kid who hadn’t eaten in a few weeks.
Still … I began to notice non-human details about him. His pupils were strangely reflective, like a cat’s. Under his translucent skin, his veins were more green than blue. And, despite his dishevelled appearance, he didn’t reek like a normal homeless person – body odour, alcohol, stale grease. He smelled more like pine needles and woodsmoke. How had I not realized that before?
I wanted to ask him about elves, but walking and talking in sign language don’t mix. Nor could Hearth read lips very well on the move. I kind of liked that, actually. You couldn’t multitask while talking to him. The dialogue required one hundred per cent focus. If all conversations were like that, I imagined people wouldn’t say so much stupid garbage.
We were passing Copley Square when he pulled me into the doorway of an office building.
Gómez, he signed. Wait.
Gómez was a beat cop who knew us by sight. He didn’t know my real name, but if he’d seen a recent picture of me on the news I would have a hard time explaining why I wasn’t dead. Also, Gómez wasn’t the friendliest guy.
I tapped Hearth’s shoulder for attention. ‘What’s it like … where you’re from?’
Hearth’s expression turned guarded. Alfheim not so different. Only brighter. No night.
‘No night … like, ever?’
No night. The first time I saw a sunset …
He hesitated, then splayed both hands in front of his chest like he was having a heart attack: the sign for scared.
I tried to imagine living in a world where it was always daytime, then watching the sun disappear in a wash of blood-coloured light on the horizon.
‘That would be freaky,’ I decided. ‘But don’t elves have stuff humans would be scared of? Like … alf seidr?’
A light kindled in Hearth’s eyes. How do you know that term?
‘Uh … yesterday on the battlefield, somebody said I did it.’ I told him about the blast that had knocked everyone’s weapons away. ‘And when I healed Blitz’s arm, or walked into that wall of flames on the Longfellow Bridge … I wondered if it was all the same kind of magic.’
Hearth seemed to take longer than usual to process my words.
Not sure. His gestures were smaller, more careful. Alf seidr can be many things – usually peaceful magic. Healing. Growing. Stopping violence. It cannot be learned. Not like rune magic. You have alf seidr in your blood, or you do not. You are son of Frey. Maybe have some of his abilities.
‘Frey is an elf?’
Hearth shook his head. Frey is the lord of Alfheim, our patron god. Vanir are close to elves. Vanir were the source of all alf seidr.
‘Past tense? Don’t elves still talk to trees and speak with birds and stuff?’
Hearth grunted with irritation. He peeked around the corner to check on our neighbourhood policeman.
Alfheim not like that, he signed. Not for centuries. Almost no one is born with alf seidr. No one practises magic. Most elves think Midgard is a myth. Humans live in castles and wear plate mail and tights.
‘Maybe a thousand years ago.’
Hearth nodded. Back then, our worlds interacted more. Now, both worlds have changed. Elves spend most of their time staring at screens, watching funny pixie videos when they are supposed to be working.
I wasn’t sure I’d interpreted his signs correctly – pixie videos? – but Alfheim sounded depressingly like Midgard.
‘So you don’t know any more about magic than I do,’ I said.
I don’t know what it looked like in the old days. But I am trying to learn. I have given up everything to try.
‘What do you mean?’
He glanced around the corner again. Gómez is gone. Come on.
I wasn’t sure if he’d missed my question or he’d just chosen to ignore it.
The funeral home was near Washington and Charles, tucked in a row of Bay Village town houses that seemed lost among the newer concrete and glass skyscrapers. A sign on the awning read: TWINING & SONS MEMORIAL SERVICES.
A display by the door listed upcoming viewings. The top one read: MAGNUS CHASE. The date was today, starting at 10 a.m. The door was locked. The lights were off.
‘Early for my own funeral,’ I said. ‘Typical.’
My hands were shaking. The idea of seeing my dead self was more unnerving than actually dying. ‘So do we break in?’
I’ll try something, Hearth signed.
From inside his coat, he pulled a leather pouch. The contents clattered with a familiar sound.
‘Runestones,’ I guessed. ‘You know how to use them?’
He shrugged like, We’re about to find out. He took one stone and tapped it against the door handle. The lock clicked. The door swung open.
‘Nice,’ I said. ‘Would that work on any door?’
Hearth put away the pouch. I couldn’t quite read his expression – a mixture of sadness and wariness.
I’m learning, he signed. Only tried that once before, when I met Blitz.
‘How did you two –’
Hearth cut me off with a wave. Blitz saved my life. Long story. You go inside. I will stand guard here. Dead human bodies … He shuddered and shook his head.
So much for my elfish backup.
Inside, the funeral home smelled of mouldering bouquets. The threadbare red carpet and dark wood panelling made the whole place feel like one giant coffin. I crept down the hallway and peeked into the first room.
It was set up like a chapel: three stained-glass windows on the back wall, rows of folding chairs facing an open coffin on a dais. I hated this already. I’d been raised non-religious. I’d always considered myself an atheist.
So, of course, my punishment was to find out I was the son of a Norse deity, go to a Viking afterlife and have an open-coffin memorial in a cheesy uni-faith chapel. If there was an Almighty God up there, a head honcho of the universe, He was totally laughing at me right now.
At the entrance of the room was a poster-size portrait of me, wreathed in black crêpe paper. They’d chosen the same goofy fifth-grade picture from my elementary-school yearbook. Next to it, on a small table, was a guest book.
I was tempted to pick up the pen and write the first entry:
Thanks for coming to my funeral! – Magnus.
Who would be here, anyway? Uncle Randolph? Maybe Frederick and Annabeth, if they were still in town. My old classmates from two years ago? Yeah, right. If the funeral home offered snacks, some of my homeless buddies might show up, but the only ones I really cared about were Blitzen and Hearthstone.
I realized I was procrastinating. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been standing in the chapel doorway. I forced myself down the aisle.
When I saw my own face in the coffin, I nearly threw up.
Not because I’m that ugly, but because … well, you know how weird it is to hear your own voice on a recording? And how irritating it can be to see yourself in a photo if you don’t think you look good? Okay, imagine seeing your actual body lying right in front of you. It was so real, and yet so not me.
My hair was shellacked to the sides of my head. My face was caked with make-up, probably to cover cuts and bruises. My mouth was fixed in a weird little smile that I never would’ve made in real life. I was dressed in a cheap-looking blue suit with a blue tie. I hated blue. My hands were clasped over my stomach, hiding the place where I’d been impaled by a molten piece of asphalt.
‘No, no, no.’ I gripped the sides of the coffin.
The wrongness of it made me feel like my guts were burning all over again.
I’d always had an image of what would happen to my body after death. This wasn’t it. My mom and I had a pact – which sounds creepy, but it really wasn’t. She made me promise that when she died I’d have her cremated. I’d scatter her ashes in the woods of the Blue Hills. If I died first, she promised she would do the same for me. Neither of us liked the idea of being embalmed, turned into some chemically stabilized exhibition, then buried in a box. We wanted to be in the sunshine and the fresh air and just kind of dissolve.
I hadn’t been able to keep my promise to my mother. Now I was getting exactly the kind of funeral I didn’t want.
My eyes watered. ‘I’m sorry, Mom.’
I wanted to push over the coffin. I wanted to torch this place. But I had a job to do. The sword.
If it was in the coffin, it wasn’t in plain sight. I held my breath and slipped my hand along the inside lining like I was searching for loose change. Nothing.
Thinking the sword might be hidden by a glamour, I stretched my arm over the coffin, trying to sense the blade’s presence like I’d done on the Longfellow Bridge. No heat. No humming.
The only other option was to check under the body.
I looked down at Magnus 1.0. ‘Sorry, man.’
I tried to tell myself the corpse was an inanimate object like a scarecrow. Not a real person. Certainly not me.
I rolled him to one side. He was heavier than I would’ve thought.
Nothing underneath but safety pins holding the coat in place. A label on the white lining read: 50% SATIN, 50% POLYESTER, PRODUCT OF TAIWAN.
I lowered the body back into place. Dead Magnus’s hair was all messed up now. The left side bloomed like a bird-of-paradise flower. My hands had come unclasped so I appeared to be giving everybody the finger.
‘Much better,’ I decided. ‘At least that looks like me.’
Behind me, a broken voice said, ‘Magnus?’
I almost jumped out of my Wiggles shirt.
Standing in the doorway was my cousin Annabeth.